find him guilty of treason, it not being a case
of conviction under this article of the Con-
stitution, upon this proceeding in rem agains
the property, you have a right to forfeit it
absolutely.
Mr. STIRLING. That is not the proposition
at all. The proposition related to cases
where a man is tried for treason and con-
victed of treason. I distinctly stated that
they did argue that property could be taken
by a proceeding in rem after his death; and
that was the decision.
Mr. CHAMBERS. Perhaps a little history of
this business of treason, attainder and con-
viction, may throw some light on the subject
before us; which, I will preface my remarks
by saying, is a mere question of the innocent
wife and children of a person convicted of
disloyalty.
Treason in the country from which we take
our notions and jurisprudence, is an offence
sometimes judged of by Parliament in the
shape of bills of attainder; sometimes by
the ordinary process of courts and juries.
The attainder was a species of political ven-
geance visited often upon individuals from
partisan feeling, and productive of the ut-
most injustice and violence. With regard to
that mode of proceeding, there could be no
sort of doubt, such as the gentleman seems
to intimate, for, under the Constitution of
the United States, it was decided to be an ut-
terly inexcusable mode of punishment. The
9th section of article 1st of the Constitution
of the United States leaves no room for
doubt about that:
"Sec. 9. No bill of attainder or ex post
facto law shall be passed."
Yet the Constitution says, that no attainder
of treason shall work corruption of blood or
forfeiture, except during the life of the person
attainted. The Constitution of the United
States having said there shall be no bill of
attainder in the technical sense of the term,
when it speaks of the fact of attainder in this
other clause, certainly could have meant no-
thing else than the only other mode of at-
tainder, by conviction in a court of jus-
tice.
According to the Constitution of the Uni-
ted States, then, a party must first be con-
victed by court and jury. It would be im-
possible for a court and jury to convict a
party under the Constitution of the United
States, and, thank God, so "far impossible un-
der any act of Congress, except by having
the party personally to answer to the charge.
I do not now speak of what courts martial
may do. I certainly do not mean to contend
that there may not be such convictions; but
I do contend that if there are, they are ut-
terly without authority of the Constitution
of the United States.
This Constitution of the United States then
is very sufficient evidence that in the adop-
tion, and, as I hope, in the amelioration of |
the criminal laws to which our laws were as-
similated, and which, to a certain extent,
still prevailed in the minds of those who
framed our Constitution in 1776, those crimi-
nal laws were ameliorated with regard to the
innocent wives who, at former periods, had
been victims, under the laws, of the punish-
ment of those with whom they had been con-
nected. In other words, it ceased to be the
opinion as it had been in England, and, as
in the early period it bad been here, that the
innocent child and wife should suffer for the
offences of the parent and husband, with
which offence they bad no connection, and
possibly no sympathy. In the Revolutionary
war we confiscated the property of traitors
by attainder. Our ancestors in 1776 had not
abandoned that idea. In very many cases
property was ordered to be sold. The State
bad a regular agent, if I recollect right, for
the purpose of making sales of confiscated
property. In such cases the party bad gone
abroad In some instances the property was
not sold, except a limited interest in it. I
believe there was not a solitary instance in
which, where that was the case, if a subse-
quent application was made to the Legisla-
ture, it declined to give the children what in-
terest remained in them of the property of
their ancestors who bad gone abroad, and
been unfaithful to the interests of the State—
in short, had been a tory. Those who had
abandoned the country, or gone into the
English service, or who went out of the State,
had their property confiscated.
The Constitution of the United States commenced
a system of amelioration. I do not
go through this argument because my learn-
ed friend over the way, (Mr. Sands,) has
said it never was dreamed of, but all the
digests may be ransacked, and there never
was a counsel, judge, or lawyer prosecuting
a case of treason, or defending a case of trea-
son, that ever intimated anything else as the
meaning of the second clause of the third
section of the third article of the Constitu-
tion, except what its plain words import,
that the confiscation article should effect those
entitled to its benefit, only during the life of
the party convicted. Our Constitution of
1850, adopts the same idea :
"Art. 24th. That no conviction shall
work corruption of blood, or forfeiture of
estate."
Now are we to make a retrograde move-
ment? To that I wish to invite the atten-
tion of the Convention, as being in fact the
whole question before us. Shall there be
such a provision in this Constitution as that
the innocent family, the wife and children of
a man who shall have been misguided by
any feeling whatever. I care not how vital
may be his crime, if a man who shall have
taken such a step, and placed himself in such
a position that it confers upon the government
the right to forfeit his property, that his wife |
